Welcome …

A story of love, lies and memory

General blogging and works-in-progress are here.   My debut novel, Daisychains of  Silence has its own site. Click on the link to find out more, read the first three chapters or even leave a review. I’d love to hear your thoughts …

Loving where I live …

Another scene from our little hamlet. I stomped around in the sun and the snow and brought these pictures home:

Snow scenes at the end of my lane …

wasn’t it stunning in the snow?

I’ve fallen in love with the landscape that’s surrounded me for the last twenty years. I’ve seen it with fresh eyes and it’s beautiful.

Thrilled with recent review of Daisychains …

Andrew Blackman, writer of On the Holloway Road, winner of  the Luke Bitmead Award and published by Legend Press in 2009, stopped by to read the first three chapters of Daisychains of Silence and left a fabulous review! To say I’m chuffed to bits sounds naff, but I am. Chuffed to bits, that is. Not naff.

On the Holloway Road has leapt to the top of my reading list. Can’t wait – it sounds just my sort of book.

Have anti-bullying campaigners been reading Daisychains of Silence?

When I see the image they wanted to use for their advertising campaign it makes me wonder:

http://thirdsector.co.uk/Channels/Communications/Article/977415/Beatbullying-appeal-against-TV-ban-hard-hitting-advertising-campaign/

On 13th January 2010, Kaye Wiggins of Thirdsector Online writes that Clearcast rules images of girl sewing her own mouth shut are too disturbing to be broadcast.

Daisy keeps it all inside too. Read about how she copes with bullying in Daisychains of Silence chapter one.

The Christmas Hamster

Christmas Eve in Mulberry Avenue, and it was all going so well. Well, it was until I couldn’t find my new sparkly Christmas top.

We were due at our neighbours for drinks and nibbles at seven. The Christmas presents were all wrapped and hidden in the attic, apart from the tiny Russian hamster which was tucked safely out of sight in its brand new cage in the bottom of our wardrobe. Or so we thought.

I moved hangers from left to right three times in search of the spangly top that was guaranteed to lift John’s spirits higher than my boobs. Time was shorter than my skirt, and I gave up, mystified. I settled on a fluffy snow-white jumper, pinned my five-year-old daughter’s home-made holly garland to my breast, slicked red across my lips and popped a ruby in beneath them. My outfit didn’t have quite the desired effect, but the light in Charlotte’s eyes as she beamed a smile at me made up for the lack of sparkle in my husband’s, and at least I’d be spared my mother’s disapproving sneer.

Mother. Mother was staying with us for the duration. I would say enduration, but I don’t think such a word exists. Still, it’s a good word to describe our feelings as we endured the twelve days of Christmas in the company of an eternal optimist, as she liked to describe herself. Or ‘often pissed’, as we liked to describe her.

‘What’s that, dear? Don’t mumble so!” she said, as we whispered it.

“You were missed,” I said brightly.

“What? Take that metal out of your mouth and I might be able to understand you.”

“You know, when you didn’t come last year ‘cos you were on a cruise?”

“Cruise? Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not grieving! I’m having a ball!”

“Good. Come on, Mum, it’s time to go.”

We walked ten paces down our path to the gate, turned on the pavement and walked ten paced up the path to our neighbours’ front door. Paul’s bonhomie filled the open doorway but we could see past him to the welcoming tree that dominated the small hall of the Victorian terraced house, identical to ours but the wrong way round. Ours was the right way round, of course, with rooms off the hall to the right.

I’d learnt my mother’s trick of always being right, and managed to pull it off most of the time in my own house. Not in our neighbours’ house, though. No. Our dear friends, Sylvia and Paul were always right, and I demurred most of the time out of politeness. We had to live with them, after all. Fall-outs in our road were as frequent as Ryan Air flights, and I preferred an amiable life, at no small cost to my blood pressure and cat’s-bum mouth, sadly inherited from my mother along with an embarrassing preference for sweet sherry.

Charlotte looked like an angel in her cream velvet dress, and Oliver was young enough to remember real nappies he’d not yet adopted the low-slung crotch look of the street. So we looked a picture on Sylvia and Paul’s doorstep. So close to the perfect family I wished we’d thought to dress up in advance and have photos taken for our Christmas cards, a bit like the Royals, instead of panic-buying the bumper box from Tesco that I’d scribbled in haste after the last date for posting. Anyway, I hope you get the picture. I was proud.

That didn’t last long – Mother made sure of that. But I digress.

Charlotte had been begging us for a hamster all year, and we’d finally given in to her wheedling ways (she takes after the maternal line.) Keeping the secret had not been easy, and I did wonder at the wisdom of making her miserable in the lead up to Christmas, just to make the surprise all the more thrilling. But that was the tactic we seemed to have become embroiled in.

“It’s impossible, Darling. The cat would eat it – it wouldn’t be fair.”

Oh dear. Those words would come to haunt me.

The evening was as good as could be expected in the circumstances. The circumstances being trying distract my mother from the sherry and trying to keep my daughter’s sticky hands off the yummy Tia Maria bottle.

Still, we had a good time, the children were a delight, John played O Little Town of Bethlehem on the piano and we all sang ‘Time to go home now, I’ve got an aching head’ as we weaved up the path to our front door, Sylvia and Paul blowing kisses across the wall. John had Oliver cradled in his arms, his jeans slipped to almost street level, a hint of what was to come, his thumb stuck sleepily in his four year old mouth. Mother held onto me with a surprisingly strong grip, and Charlotte refused to hold anyone’s hand, her independent spirit already flying on ahead. We closed the door behind us, shoosh-ing each other as we giggled and stumbled and tripped over the flex from the fairy lights taped inadequately to the banister. Mother loosened them further as she climbed the stairs, John loaded with children behind her, saying, “I’ll take the kids up, tuck them in.”

I turned to the sitting room, fingers fumbling for the light switch, distracted by Squeek, our tabby-tiger cat, who was playing mouse in front of the Christmas tree, the stirred air sprinkling pine needles across the carpet. I flicked the switch and gasped. Tears filled my eyes as I realised what he was playing with. He really was playing mouse, except he was playing hamster. I started to shake – the sherry didn’t help – and I shooed Squeek out to the kitchen, scolding him through my stifled sobs as I shoved his furry butt through the cat flap. I met John on the stairs coming down, his arms full of presents. 

“What’s wrong?” he whispered.

“The cat got the hamster,” I said through fresh tears. I rushed past him to the bedroom.  I needed to remove all evidence of hamster-life, it was too sad to have a reminder of the tragedy hidden in our wardrobe. I slid the door as far to the right as it would go, and delved into the darkness for the cage hidden among the shoes, dragged it out, removed the water bottle from the bars. John was behind me.

“I’ll go down and clear it up,” he said, taking the hamster cage from me.

“Thanks, love. Hide the cage in the shed. I want to go in and say goodnight.” I dried my eyes, thinking, I’m no good at acting, but I can do this. I picked up the well-thumbed Santa book from Charlotte’s bedside table, knowing there were no cats or hamsters in the story, and sat down on my daughter’s bed, stroking curls from her forehead as I read about Santa flying through the sky bringing joy to all the children in the world. I sang Jingle Bells as she closed her eyes, images of Santa’s reindeers flying through her mind as I kissed her goodnight, sweet dreams, I love you.

John and I piled all the other presents underneath the tree, trying our best to be cheerful. John had made Charlotte an easel and blackboard, which looked like a big present, so we consoled ourselves with that as we went to bed.

I couldn’t sleep that Christmas Eve. The wind rustled the trees outside our window, and I lay staring into the darkness, sad for the poor little hamster who’d come to such a tragic end in our home. In the stillness of the bedroom, the rustling grew louder and more persistent, seemed to be coming from the wardrobe, haunting me.

I shook John, whispering loudly for him to wake up. I put on the bedside light as he was stirring, padded round the bed to the wardrobe, listening. The rustling was definitely coming from inside. John trailed the bedside lamp across the carpet, tilted the light to shine inside the wardrobe, behind the glass door. Something twinkled on the floor among the shoes. I peered into the shadows, watched sparkles glittering like stars in the darkened recess. John knelt to reach into the moving, shimmering twinkles, and I held my breath.

His arm came out with Houdini snuggled in the palm of his hand. We were both crying and laughing and shooshing each other not to wake the children. Houdini had made a bed on my sparkly Christmas top, which had slipped from the hanger to the floor. It was in shreds but Houdini wasn’t in bits at all. It seems Squeek had brought in a field mouse to play with under the Christmas lights, and we’d assumed the worst.

For Houdini, it was just a Christmas adventure. For Charlotte it was her best Christmas ever, with the best-ever present, her best-loved hamster, aptly named Houdini, the first of many she would love throughout her childhood.

She’s twenty-five now, and, to Charlotte, home is not a home without a hamster. She has two adored hamsters in her flat in London, and she’s bringing them home for Christmas.

We’ve postponed our plans for a new kitten to fill our empty nest – I think we’d best wait until the New Year, don’t you?
Wishing everyone a very Happy Christmas!

Update: 
I told her to wait, but no … Charlotte now has a Christmas kitten! A playmate for the hamsters … not really, it will be fine, honestly.:)

Read more fun Christmas stories on authonomy. Talking Turkey is full of funny true Christmas stories. Join up for free, read them, enjoy them, back them, then Harper Collins might even publish them!

Daisy in 1st person POV …

This is not an easy exercise. 

I’ve been busy re-structuring Daisychains of Silence so that, rather than chapters alternating the present day story with backstory, the back story is now being weaved into the present narrative as flashbacks, with scenes of backstory being shown when something in the current story triggers a memory of the past.

Not only that, I’m also changing the story so that it’s now being told in the first person POV. Daisy is now ‘I’.  I hope it’s going to work.

Narrative summary vs dialogue scenes?

‘Self-editing for Fiction Writers’ arrived today from Amazon, and it’s made me question lots of elements of fiction writing.

Firstly, narrative passages. The book recommends turning narrative summary into scenes, especially in the opening chapters. The book explains this will ’show’ what’s happening, as opposed ‘telling’ the reader what’s happening. 
My opening chapter is entirely narrative prose, yet I don’t feel it’s telling. It’s showing what is happening, but with no dialogue.

I’m also bemused by advice I frequently observe being handed out on writers’ critique and peer review sites. Always show, never tell; don’t use adverbs; only tell the story from one point of view – head hopping is about the worse thing a writer can do.

When I started writing Daisychains I’d never read a ‘How-To’ book about writing, and I’ve never attended a writing course of any kind. I’ve read voraciously for forty years, and through reading, have learned to write. All these rules … well, I don’t know what to think. I only know that the books I read don’t seem to comply with any of them.

In the same Amazon delivery was Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping – one of the Observer’s 100 greatest novels of all time.
Marilynne Robinson is one of my favourite writers, yet I hadn’t read her first novel. This omission had been niggling at me for some time, so this afternoon I began to read.  The whole of the first chapter – all twenty eight pages – is narrated. What is an aspiring writer to make of that?

One minute I was about to turn Daisychains opening chapter into a scene with dialogue, and now I think, no, it’s fine as it is. The feedback I’ve had tells me it’s wonderful as it is. But what if publishers will now only consider books written to a formula that fits current lightweight trends?

I don’t have the answers. But I’m going to carry on writing as I have been. From somewhere deep within me that is longing to be heard.

A Christmas kitten …

Happy times in our household. Well, not exactly our household, but next week our daughter is coming home from London. She’s moving to a house nearby and tomorrow she is going to be the proud new parent of a gorgeous little kitten. 

I hope she’s told the hamsters. Read my Christmas Hamster story to see why. I told her to wait …

Christmas comes to town …

This evening we had a merry time in our local market town where a Christmas fair was in full swing. The streets were closed to trafic and we enjoyed mulled wine and mince pies in the drizzle, compliments of the town’s new NHS dentist. A coincidence, because I’d just made an appointment for a check-up this afternoon, having decided we’d been fleeced for long enough by the private sector.

A novel and jolly way to make my new dentist’s acquaintance. He looked very dapper standing on the pavement in the rain, smiling at passers-by while ladling warm wine into plastic cups. He even offered mouthwash and pre-cut lengths of floss to ensure good oral hygiene after we’d finished munching the mince pies.

A true Christmas story. Apart from the last bit – I made that up (about the floss and mouthwash, in case there’s any doubt!) For more funny ‘cos they’re true Christmas stories, check out Talking Turkey. Have a giggle at our expense – we’re not proud. Anyone can read them for free – just sign up to authonomy to get in the Christmas mood. Even better, add it to your shelf – you’ll be helping the book on its journey to publication, maybe even in time for next Christmas.  A perfect addition to every Christmas stocking in the land!

Agent spurring me on …

My lovely agent (I’m not signed, so she’s not really mine yet, but I’m a firm believer in visualisation and positive thinking!) has given me more encouraging feedback. I’ve copied her recommendations at the opening page of my novel as a daily reminder of the importance of themes, concepts, a strong setting, point of view and the finished word count I’m aiming for. She also told me to take my time! The exclamation mark is hers, so I am seriously told, and I am listening!  I’m so glad I don’t have to rush it. There’s no pressure, and it will take however long it takes to produce the quality novel of literary fiction I hope to achieve.

I’ve embarked on a major re-structure, and I think Daisychains of Silence will be a deeper, more meaningful novel as a result of these changes.